Joseph E. Brown

Joseph Emerson Brown (15 April 1821-30 November 1894) was Governor of Georgia from 6 November 1857 to 27 June 1865, succeeding Herschel Johnson and preceding James Johnson, and Senator from Georgia from 26 May 1880 to 3 March 1891, in between John B. Gordon's two terms.

Biography
Joseph Emerson Brown was born in Pickens, South Carolina on 15 April 1821, and his family moved to Union County, Georgia when he was young. In 1847, he opened a legal practice in Canton, Georgia, and he became a state senator in 1849. Brown, formerly a member of the American Whig Party, became a leader of the US Democratic Party in Georgia, and he became a circuit court judge in 1855 and Governor of Georgia in 1857. In 1860, he supported the secession of both Georgia and South Carolina, but he spoke out against the power of the Confederate States of America in favor of states' rights and decentralization. From 1865 to 1870, after the end of the American Civil War, he served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, and he became known as a "scalawag" for his support of Reconstruction under the liberal US Republican Party. After Reconstruction, he returned to the Democrats, and he served as a Senator from Georgia from 1880 to 1891. He died in Atlanta, Georgia in 1894 at the age of 73.